:-$2t » NA T U RE-STUD Y RE VIE W [13 :8— Nov. ,1917 



birds here form an orchestra. The limpid notes of the white 

 crowned and white throated sparrows are blended with the louder, 

 searching songs of the orioles and grosbeaks. Thus with the 

 sweetest music, the waters of the brook awake and ooze slowly out 

 of their swamp cradle. Then they are caught together by a 

 narrower passageway and begin their journey; they cut their way 

 th rough the soft muddy earth of the meadow, crossed by the road 

 and then begin to show the character of a stream. At first the 

 banks are muddy and tender, the brook flows slowly winding and 

 curving this way or that. It soon forms a wide curve, past the 

 edge of open wood, where large white pines, maples, scarlet and 

 white oaks form a partial curtain overhead. While along the 

 edges and in open places the witchhazel, cedar and hawthorn grow. 

 All the wild flowers of the wood, hepatica, violet, adder's tongue, 

 tri Ilium and squirrel's corn form a gorgeous carpet for this wood- 

 land. Close by the side of the brook the pussy willow bends, and 

 the quaking aspen stands above. The brook trickles along the 

 side of the wood, curling slowly to the south then meanders 

 with many a curve and recurve through the moist and deeper 

 wood. 



Here in the denser shade of the bush, the hermit thrush is seen. 

 Many other of nature's best songsters are singing here and as if 

 inspired by music the brook begins to utter soft gurgling notes. 

 At the edge of the woods an old pine stump-fence crosses its path 

 and makes it flow deeper but more slowly. 



A Marsh hawk rises from an inlet of swamp at the corner of the 

 woods, where the brook receives a companion flowing from the 

 north, and thus strengthened, straight toward the northwest it 

 steers its course, across the lower center of the meadow. The sides 

 of the meadow rise more steeply here and show that the brook 

 once flowed through a thicket of wild cherry, teasel and small trees; 

 now all is cleared away to make more soil for the farmer, and only a 

 tall shagbark guards the south bank with smaller elms and maples 

 on the north. 



Here the water washes over pebbles of the glacial period gather- 

 ing much sand from its grassy banks. Where the meadow becomes 

 nearly level, the stream does not keep its close channel but widens 

 out into many small rivulets again uniting after a distance of a few 

 rods where it is made stronger by a branch flowing from the woods 

 at the north. 



